On my way home from Connor’s wake, I text Jared, typing faster than I can walk.
Why did I go?
I told you not to.
I was just trying to do the right thing.
Who told you to do that?
They invited me over for dinner.
They want to know more about Connor and me.
About our “friendship.”
This is getting good.
When are you going?
I don’t think I can do it.
Take pictures.
I’d love to know what that house looks like.
I stop at a busy intersection, cars whizzing by. It’s after seven now. My oxford shirt feels like it’s strangling me. All I want to do is climb into bed and hide under the covers. Lately, every time I leave the house, I only end up making more trouble for myself.
The signal changes and I resume walking (and typing).
So you think I should go to dinner?
Now you have to.
What are you going to tell them?
The truth.
I need to tell them the truth once and for all.
The truth. Really?
Yes?
You think you’re going to go to the Murphys’ house and
explain to them that the only thing
left they have of their son is some weird
sex letter that you wrote to yourself?
You do realize you could go to jail for this if you get caught, right?
But I didn’t do anything.
Yeah, I hate to tell you this, Evan,
but you may have already perjured yourself.
Isn’t that only when you’re under oath?
Like, in a courtroom?
Well, weren’t you under oath? In a way?
Um, no, actually.
Look, do yourself a favor and listen to me this time.
Do you want to have another meltdown like last year in English when
you were supposed to give that speech about Daisy Buchanan,
but instead you just stood there staring at your note cards
and saying, “um, um, um,” over and over again
like you were having a brain aneurysm?
What do you expect me to do?
Just keep lying?
I didn’t say lie.
All you have to do is just nod and confirm.
Whatever they say about Connor, you just nod.
Don’t contradict and don’t make shit up.
It’s foolproof.
Literally, nothing I tell my parents is true
and they have no idea.
I absorb Jared’s instructions. I’m trying to accept what he says I have to do while also thinking of ways to not have to do it. At the moment, the only house I want to be in is my own.
It’s nearly dark by the time I get there. The driveway is empty and the lights are off. I ignore the envelopes and flyers spilling from the mailbox. None of it is for me.
The front door whines as I push it open. I’m inside now, finally, but I’m missing that sense of relief I was hoping to find.
There’s a note on my door: Sit tight. Take hold. Thunder Road! When it’s not a horoscope, my mom is often quoting a Bruce Springsteen lyric. It’s like she has no idea how to talk to me.
I crumple the note and stare at my wrongly dressed reflection in the mirror. Even if I had known that a suit was the thing to wear, I don’t own one. The last time I wore a suit was at my dad’s wedding and that was a rental. My mom and I flew out to Colorado. She didn’t want to go to the wedding, but I did. I don’t know if she went just for me or if she also wanted to prove to my dad that she had moved on. She certainly didn’t prove it to me. When we got back to the hotel after the reception, she took the heel of her shoe and started hammering it into our picture-frame wedding favor until the carpet was covered with tiny pieces of glass. At the time I thought she just hated picture frames. I was only ten.
Right now it’s almost six o’clock in Colorado. My dad has probably just arrived home from his accounting job. He hangs his coat up on the rack. Theresa already has dinner on the table, lasagna or a juicy prime rib. Everyone sits, and Theresa’s older daughter, Haley, leads the family in a prayer, even though my dad was at one time an atheist. Haley’s little sister, Dixie, sits there all cute with her milk mustache. Dad gives his second wife a wink and his second kids a hearty smile, and as they dig into the home-cooked meal Theresa slaved over all afternoon, each member of the family takes a turn talking about his or her day.
Hey, Dad, I say to the empty hallway as I head to my room, want to hear about my day?
Interrupting this quality chat with Dad is the familiar whine of the front door. It sends a horror-film shiver down my spine. By the time I hear my mom’s voice, I’m already kicking off my dress shoes and stuffing them into my closet. One of the buttons on my shirt refuses to open before finally doing me a solid and coming undone. I slide under my covers, still in my khakis, just as my mom appears in my doorway.
“Hi, honey.”
“You’re home early,” I say.
“Not really. It’s eight o’clock.”
“Oh, wow, I didn’t notice. I was so busy.”
“Oh yeah? Doing what?”
I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to hide. I haven’t had time to figure that out. It just seems like the most prudent thing to do is to say as little as possible.
“Just thinking,” I answer.
Her expression changes. “About what happened?” She enters my room and perches awkwardly on the edge of my bed.
“What do you mean?” I glance over at my crumpled shirt on the floor. It’s only a matter of time before she starts poking around my room and inquires why I unearthed that never-worn piece from my closet.
“I got an email from your school,” she says. “About the boy who killed himself? Connor Murphy?”
There’s something about hearing my mother say it out loud. “Right, yeah.”
“Did you know him?”
“No,” I say quickly, clearly, definitively. If only I could have shown such decisiveness with Connor’s parents.
“Well, if you ever want to talk about anything, I’m here. And if I’m not here here, I’m a phone call away. Or text. Email. Whatever.”
I was just thinking about how far away Colorado seemed, and here’s my mom, living with me in the same house, and I honestly can’t say she feels any closer.
She bows her head and starts fiddling with the drawstring of her pants. I can see the deep brown roots at the top of her head. They seem to be spreading and negating her most recent trip to the hairdresser. I’m not sure when she last visited the salon, but she’s constantly saying how her next appointment is long overdue.
“Your cast,” she says.
I try to shove it under my blanket, but I’m too slow. She grabs my arm. This damn cast should be on my foot—it’s become my Achilles’ heel.
“It says, ‘Connor.’” She sharpens her eyes. “You said you didn’t know him.”
“Yeah, I don’t. I didn’t. This is a different Connor.” As someone who’s always been bad at lying, I can honestly say it never gets easier. “He’s new this year, so yeah, I let him sign my cast. Putting myself out there, y’know?”
She breathes out and places a palm over her heart. “For a second there, I was worried.”
I still am.
“Hey, you know what?” she says. “Why don’t we go to Bell House tomorrow?”
Breakfast at Bell House used to be our Saturday morning ritual, but with my mom’s busy schedule, we haven’t been back in a while. When we do make plans, something usually comes up. As much as I love the pancakes at Bell House, I feel like the smart thing to do right now is stay home and recharge. “I think I have a lot of homework,” I say.
“Come on,” she says. “You’ve been back at school for a week already and I’ve barely seen you.”
One suicide and all of a sudden my mom is paying attention. Seriously, though, considering what she sees at work—stabbings, burns, overdoses, gunshot wounds, induced comas, not to mention untold numbers of soiled bedpans—I’d assumed she was numb to tragedies by now. But this one obviously hits close to home. Even closer than she knows.
I guess having a little company on a wide-open Saturday wouldn’t be the worst thing. I do love those pancakes. “Okay. Yeah. That would be good.”
“It’s a date, then,” she says, tapping a spirited drum fill on my leg. “I can’t wait.”
I think I’ll save my enthusiasm for when we’re in the car and I actually believe we’re going.
She stands up and grabs my Ativan off the nightstand. “You okay on refills?”
She says this so often now it’s almost become a stand-in for goodbye.
“Yup,” I say, which is my standard reply. Although the way today went, I might need a refill sooner than usual.
“Good. Well, don’t stay up too late. ”
“I won’t,” I say, eager to end this conversation.
She pauses in my doorway. “I love you.”
I look at her. “You too.”
An unsteady smile and she finally shuts the door. I jump out of bed and put my dress shirt back on its hanger and into my closet. While I’m up, I pause, overcome with a feeling. I step to the window, raise the blinds, and look out. The street appears empty. The neighborhood is completely still. There’s no one out there. Of course not.
• • •
The Bell House hostess tells us to sit wherever we’d like. My mom looks to me to pick a table, but “wherever we’d like” is way too open-ended for a mind like mine and I become paralyzed. So, with a barely perceptible shake of her head, my mom leads the way.
Breakfast is not the main meal on my mind this morning. From the moment I woke up, I’ve been obsessing about this dinner with the Murphys. Jared says I have no choice but to go, and I really wish I could think of a reason for why he’s wrong about that.
“You’re so far away,” my mom says when we’re seated. “I feel like I want to come sit on your side.”
“Don’t,” I beg. I already feel like we’re on a date, with my mom wearing tight jeans and a low-cut shirt instead of her standard (and appealingly baggy) scrubs. If she sits next to me in this small booth, I may have to begin emancipation procedures.
I can’t recall the last time my mom went on an actual date with a man. There was a leather-jacket guy named Andreas many moons ago, but I’m not sure what happened to him. I like to think he died while attempting a motorcycle stunt.
The server comes and I give her my order without even opening the menu: pancakes, hash browns, OJ. (I’m my most efficient when I don’t have to think and I’m barely aware of what’s happening.) My mom gets an omelet.
Once our menus are cleared, my mom reaches into her purse and pulls out a folder. “Hey. Remember that short-story contest you won a few years ago?”
“I didn’t actually win. I came in third place.” Why is she bringing this up now? Has she officially run out of things to talk about with me?
“Third place in the whole country.”
“Actually, just the state and only in my age bracket.”
“Well, it was very impressive.” She places the folder on the table and flings it open. “I found these online: college scholarship essay contests. Have you heard of these? NPR did a whole thing about it the other morning. There are a million different ones you can do. I spent my whole lunch break looking these up.” She hands me a piece of paper and starts reading from the others. “The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest—ten thousand dollars, college of your choice. Henry David Thoreau Scholarship—five thousand dollars.” She hands me the entire stack. “With the way you write, you could really clean up here.”
Now I know why she defied expectations and followed through with our breakfast plans. It wasn’t simply to spend time with me, but also to give me another assignment.
“Wow,” is the only response I can manage.
She grabs the folder and places it back in her purse. I think I’ve hurt her feelings. That tends to happen.
“I just thought it was a neat idea,” she says. “You’ve always been a wonderful writer. And we’re going to need all the help we can get for college. Unless your stepmother has a trust fund for you I don’t know about, with all those fabulous tips she made cocktail waitressing.”
She will never get over the fact that Theresa went from being a cocktail waitress to a woman whose only job now is to be a mother. And she did it by stealing my mom’s husband. Sometimes I feel like my mom works so hard just so she can hold up an invisible cross-country middle finger to her younger replacement.
I get the resentment, especially with how much she has to work and for so little. She’s like an indentured servant, always rushing off to the hospital whenever she’s called, never able to say no. If she did, they’d find someone else. And it’s not like she has anything to fall back on. The degree she’s been working toward at night seems a long way from bearing any fruit.
A heap of pancakes appears before me. It’s the add-ons that make Bell House’s pancakes memorable. The house syrup, the strawberry butter, the powdered sugar. The pancakes themselves are pretty standard.
“College is going to be so great for you, honey. How many times in life do you get to just start all over again?”
That does sound tempting, actually. Can I start over today?
“The only people who like high school are cheerleaders and football players, and those people all end up miserable anyway.”
“Weren’t you a cheerleader?” I point out.
“For like a week. That doesn’t count.”
Over the years, my mom’s stint as a cheerleader has gotten shorter and shorter. She used to claim she cheered a whole season, and now she cheered only a week. All I know is she was around long enough to be photographed with the rest of the team. I guess I could ask my dad for the truth—my parents dated back in high school—but when he and I finally get a chance to talk, the last person either of us wants to talk about is my mother.
She takes my hands before I can dig into my food. “What I’m trying to say is that you’ve got so many wonderful things ahead of you. Just remember that. It’s a long way to the top, but the journey is totally worth it.”
I nod and reclaim my hands for eating. My mom, however, is frozen, staring through her food. It lasts longer than I’m comfortable with.
“Mom.”
She snaps awake, surprised. “Sorry.” She unfolds a paper napkin and lays it on her lap. “I was just thinking.”
“About?”
“About that boy who…”
The pancakes in my mouth suddenly lose their appeal. I keep wondering how he did it. Razor blade? Pills? Noose? Carbon monoxide? The casket was closed at the wake, so maybe he used a gun? I know he didn’t jump off a bridge, considering the pristine condition of my letter. I can’t find any details about his death. People online keep saying it was probably an overdose, which would be fitting. And peaceful. But maybe not. I wonder if at any point he regretted it. If there was a moment between deciding and dying when he changed his mind.
She lifts her fork. “Those poor parents. I just can’t imagine.”
I can. I witnessed it. The sadness in them, in his parents, was beyond what I’ve ever known or imagined, something total and unending. His mom was just destroyed, flattened. And right now, the two of them are probably sitting there, alone and confused, asking themselves the same sorts of questions I’m asking. The really messed-up part is that some of these questions will never have answers. Knowing that must be the worst.
But then there’s my letter. Giving them the wrong answers, but still answers. Still something.
“If I ever lost you,” my mom says, taking her first bite. “I just don’t know what I’d do.” She smiles helplessly.
For my mom, it’s only a hypothetical. But for Connor’s?
One dinner. Two hours, max. Jared’s message repeats in my mind—just nod and confirm.